


Some Other Metal Than Earth

by Buffintruder



Category: Much Ado About Nothing - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-01 22:27:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14530584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Buffintruder/pseuds/Buffintruder
Summary: A Victorian au of Much Ado About Nothing in which neither Beatrice nor Benedick are straight.





	Some Other Metal Than Earth

**Author's Note:**

> LEONATO  
> Well, niece, I hope to see you one day fitted with a husband.  
> BEATRICE  
> Not till God make men of some other metal than earth. Would it not grieve a woman to be overmastered with a pierce of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marl? No, uncle, I'll none.  
> \--Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare

It was the summer of 1883 and Beatrice was engaged to her childhood friend, Benedick Padua. The term ‘friend’ was perhaps stretching things a bit, considering they had spent most of their youth slinging increasingly clever insults back and forth at each other (in a manner most unfitting a lady like Beatrice, many would complain), but they had known each other for so long that it almost didn’t matter what the exact nature of their relationship had been. 

 

During all that time, Beatrice had never dreamed, even in her strangest nightmares, that they would marry.

 

When Beatrice turned twenty five, her uncle Leonato demanded that she stop refusing all of her suitors and simply choose one and get married. He had let her run wild long enough in her childhood, but she was an adult now and had to maintain some shred of respectability or else it would reflect poorly on him too. She was growing older and must be married soon, before it was too late to do so. His daughter Hero had already married years ago, and it was time for Beatrice to do the same.

 

Beatrice did not envy Hero’s situation one bit; even if she did like men, she wouldn’t enjoy a marriage with  _ Claudio.  _ It wasn’t that he didn’t love Hero, but he didn’t trust and respect her the way she deserved, and Beatrice could never forgive him for the horrible way he had treated Hero at what was supposed to be their wedding before they had actually gotten married. He was still making mistakes that stemmed from the same reasoning and beliefs as before, Beatrice was certain. They were probably just less obvious now. Or more socially acceptable. 

 

But Beatrice did not like men, and there seemed nothing worse in the world than being trapped in a marriage with a man that she could never love, who refused to treat her as a proper human being simply because she was a woman.

 

In the past, Beatrice had shrugged off her revulsion to marriage with jokes, such as the time she claimed that she couldn’t bear the discomfort of marrying a man with a beard, yet a man without a beard would seem to young and feminine for her. It was a secret joke that only she could enjoy, because she found women and femininity beautiful and attractive in a way that she would never see men. 

 

She had fallen in love with more than one woman and had wanted to sleep with many, but she knew that was wrong. Women weren’t supposed to  _ want _ sex with anyone. They weren’t supposed to feel romantic feelings for anybody except the man who was or would become her husband. There were stories of women in love with other men than the one they married, of course, but there were never ever stories of a woman feeling that towards a woman. Sometimes Beatrice wondered what was wrong with her that made her want to.

 

It no longer mattered that she despised the idea of marriage to a man, however. Leonato was not the most strong-willed of people, but when he said something so demandingly, with all of society backing him up, there was nothing Beatrice would be able to say or do to change his mind. She had known never to hope to marry someone she truly loved romantically, but she had thought that hoping to not marry at all might not be a waste of time. 

 

Beatrice didn’t know how she would choose the most bearable man to marry, and just thinking about it made her want to run away to some faraway place where she never had to do anything she truly did not want to do. Leonato grew more impatient with her lack of choice, and she knew she would have to come to some decision soon.

 

The opportunity came when Benedick had caught her watching one of the prettier ladies at one of Leonato’s dances and asked her quietly with a seriousness she had rarely ever heard (and never believed him capable of until the whole debacle with Hero and Claudio), “You like women more than men, don’t you?”

 

Beatrice could tell from Benedick’s voice that he had been considering the question for a long time. Heart racing, she continued to stare out at the ballroom, watching the couples swirl and step in time to the music, wondering if it would be worth it to pretend that she didn’t understand what Benedick really meant with that question. She decided against it. They had known each other far too long for him to believe that.

 

“Yes,” she had replied, careful not to sound defensive, careful to sound casual, even though she could not have been feeling emotions more opposite. Benedick could hear her discomfort, she was sure, but it wouldn’t do any good to attract attention from bystanders by acting too distressed. “I don’t like men at all.”

 

Benedick said nothing in protestation about how surely he was the exception, and Beatrice liked him a little better for that. He had truly improved in character over the past two years since Hero’s marriage was almost ruined.

 

“In that case, will you marry me?” he asked.

 

Beatrice turned to stare at him. “What on earth do mean by that?” She had just given him a very good reason why she would not agree to such a thing!

 

“People expect me to get married. I thrive on not following other people’s expectations, but there are certain disadvantages to having people believe that one is not the type of person to want to marry a girl.” Benedick smiled bitterly.

 

“I thought people already knew you didn’t want to,” Beatrice said. The fact that Benedick had the option to not marry, even if it wasn’t a very socially acceptable option, stung. 

 

“It’s one thing when a young man says it. He simply isn’t ready to settle down with one girl yet. I’m getting older and people will get... suspicious. If I don’t show interest.” He spoke at a slower pace, his words carefully chosen.

 

A few pieces of information clicked, and Beatrice suddenly understood. Benedick didn’t like girls much in the same way that she didn’t like men. All his bluster and past flirtations had been purely for show.

 

“Are men more to your interest?” Beatrice asked.

 

Benedick shook his head, and there was a hint of the same confusion and shame in his eyes that Beatrice had felt all her life. “I don’t know why I am this way, but I feel nothing of that sort towards anyone.”

 

Men liking men was illegal and deeply looked down upon, but it wasn’t unheard of. Beatrice had never heard of men not liking anyone. In a way, Benedick was the opposite of herself, feeling no attraction when he was supposed to feel some. 

 

“I suppose we are both a little queer by society’s standards,” Beatrice said. She gave him a small smile. Their situations were not ideal, but at least they now had someone to share it with.

 

“Indeed,” Benedick agreed. “I was hoping that if we married each other, we would both be able to hide our oddness without getting into something too terrible.”

 

“I accept,” Beatrice said. She really didn’t have any other choice. Benedick, at least, would not treat her poorly or demand anything from her that she didn’t want to give. And there were worse men to spend the rest of her life with.

 

Over the course of the next few days, they officially announced their engagement to family and friends, making up a story about long held secret loves that kept them from even considering marriage with anybody else. With their fine acting and storytelling, all thoughts of possible social deviance were pushed out of other people’s minds. 

 

As a year passed and the wedding date approached, things went as well as Beatrice could have hoped for, yet she still hated every moment of the attention. She couldn’t wait until she had married Benedick for long enough that everybody would stop focusing on it as much. She tried not to think about how for the rest of her life, she would only ever be thought of as Benedick’s wife. Wedding planning was stressful enough without such concerns.

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Beatrice snapped at her fiancé one day. “We don’t need that many knives for the dinner. This is a wedding, not a battle.”

 

Benedick shrugged helplessly. “Don Pedro gifted them to us, I wasn’t about to refuse him.”

 

Beatrice sighed sharply, angry air coming out of her nose in a burst. “Then count out the ones we actually _ need _ , and set aside the rest!”

 

“You already sound like an old married couple!” Margaret cooed at them from where she had been taking inventory of the dishware. It wasn’t the first time someone had said something like that. By this point, one week before the scheduled wedding, it almost didn’t sting anymore.

 

“If fighting is what married couples do, it’s a good thing we had plenty of practice,” Benedick replied. His tone was carefully light, as if to cover up Beatrice’s irritation.

 

Beatrice could not understand the appeal of marriage if it apparently involved so much bickering. She did enjoy the occasional verbal sparring match, but only because she didn’t expect to live with and love her opponent.

 

Once, one of the girls in the small social circle of similar age and class that Beatrice spent time with had grown very close to her, and if one of them had been a man, they undoubtedly would have declared their passions publically and gotten married. Although they hadn’t agreed on everything and they frequently bickered over petty things, they hadn’t  _ fought _ much either. Beatrice wouldn’t have loved their relationship so much if they had. Eventually, the other girl had moved away. Though they still wrote letters back and forth, their love hadn’t lasted very long afterwards.

 

Arguing with Benedick was second nature, but by now, most of the time it seemed more out of habit than anything else. They had considered each other friends for a while and most of the insults they flung at each other had lost all their heat. But it always seemed to be the times where Beatrice was genuinely irritated at him that others commented on their married-like habits.

 

Hero called Margaret out of the room to help with some flower arranging, and with just Benedick left, the place seemed a little quieter.

 

“I’m sorry about the knives,” Benedick said. “I didn’t tell Don Pedro how many people were on our guest list, so he couldn’t give an exact amount.”

 

“It was a minor thing,” Beatrice replied with a sigh. “I had no reason to snap so harshly. This is just all very stressful.”

 

Benedick laughed ruefully, running a hand through his hair. “If I had known a wedding was this much work, I never would have bothered asking you.”

 

“We haven’t even gotten to the fun bits yet,” Beatrice joked bitterly. “I look forward to the time when our families start asking us why we haven’t had any children yet.”

 

“I don’t suppose we could hide you away somewhere for nine months, find an abandoned baby, and then return as if everything had happened the way they expected us to do it?”

 

“But what about the second child and the third? I don’t believe they’ll stop hounding us for one thing or another until we’re both dead.” Beatrice knew that after only three years of marriage, Hero had already had two children with plans for more, and that situation was far from unusual. People would expect her to have at least that many. “I don’t care much for children anyway.”

 

Benedick raised a teasing eyebrow at her. “Then you must hire a nurse to do the mothering for you. I’d imagine the children would turn out far less scarred that way. I shall do the fathering, as expected, while you seduce the nurse for your mistress, with the rest of society none the wiser. I don’t mind children, as long as I have some of my own time without them. We shall be a happy family, though not like the one anybody else would imagine us to be.”

 

That almost sounded like a life Beatrice could be happy with. If she was going to defy what was good and right in society, Benedick was one of the better people she could do it with. She would never be  _ happy _ about this marriage, but it was true that having a husband would provide better cover for her to pursue her own romances and life in a way that would be impossible under her uncle Leonato’s roof. 

“It sounds like an acceptable arrangement,” Beatrice remarked, allowing herself a genuine smile for the first time in days.

 


End file.
